We get a few hundred miles into the trip and we are making great time until they close down the highway. We can't figure out why since it is beautiful out, so we sit on the side of the road for about five hours waiting for it to reopen (it's a really bad idea to drive any long distance in Japan without taking the highway because the roads are narrow, one lane, and often the speed limit is 25 miles an hour).
We give up and start to take the regular roads thinking we can catch the highway further up when a HUGE blizzard hits. We struggle through that for about TEN hours and get maybe another forty miles... maybe. We keep getting stuck, our snow tires are crap so we put on the chains which are old and proceed to fall apart. Then, we get stuck going up a hill because it is too slick and the winds start causing white-outs and we can't see anything.
Highway closed
Gas Station worker helping us with the snow tires
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